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Any Bossa freaks out there?


Tedster

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some great brazillian guitarists/songwriters:

 

joao gilberto

gilberto gil

caetano veloso

 

if you want to be completely blown away,

egberto gismonti

 

gil & gismonti play mostly steel-string, but it's great stuff.

 

disc to buy: getz/gilberto

 

chords to learn: m7 flat5, dom flat9

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2 excellent sites to start:

 

http://www.bossanovaguitar.com

http://www.jobim.com.br/e.index.html

 

Also, pick up albums by guitarists Charlie Byrd, Baden Powell, and Toninho Horta.

 

3 tunes to learn immediately are the Jobim classics "Corcovado", "Desafinado", and "A Insensitez (How Insensitive)".

 

In addition to the timeless "Getz/Gilberto" (the album to launched the US bossa nova craze of the early'60s), also look for "Elis & Tom", the wonderful album by Elis Regina and Antonio Carlos ("Tom") Jobim.

 

If you have AOL, there is an active Brazilian music message board with very knowledgeable participants.

 

[ 11-05-2001: Message edited by: mzeger ]

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In addition to the chord structures previously mentioned, also experiment with simple major/minor/dominant 7th chords using alternate bass notes. Check a recent Keyboard article about using "slash" chords. There are a lot of suspensions in bossa nova too. Let your ear guide you.

 

A very untraditional bossa nova CD that I love is (believe it or not) from Todd Rundgren! "With A Twist" is a collection of Todd re-mining his back catalog in bossa nova arrangements...and it works. Includes "Can We Still Be Friends", "I Wouldn't Have Made Any Difference", "Saw the Light", etc. Todd's vocal phrasing shows that he's studied the masters, with all the rhythmic push and pull typical of the genre. Worth finding (Amazon lists it as "limited availability").

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I've got that CD...but that wasn't what got me interested in Bossa. I've loved it for a long time...and a friend of mine is a pretty decent jazz flautist... at any rate, I remember playing "Wave" with just him on flute and me on guitar...WOW...it was really neat. At any rate, playing "Wave" from a chart is one thing, picking up on the stylistic nuances and being really able to do something well is quite another. But, yep, I do like the Todd CD. Another friend of mine in Chicago put out a Bossa CD adaptation of rock standards called "Prozak for Lovers"...great stuff.
"Cisco Kid, was a friend of mine"
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I just recently-finally-found the words and music to `Mas Que Nada` in the same place. I don`t speak Portugese, but I seem to remember a bunch of years ago, hearing Sergio Mendez and Brasil `66 doing `Fool on the Hill` with the complex time sections, and going `hey that is cool`.

The great thing about playing this kind of music is one, it`s sexy as heck and two, you don`t need fingernails at all to play it on nylon strings.

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Originally posted by skip:

Now I`ve gotta find `Waters of March`...

Oh, and if you can find it, check out Lee Ritenour with Milton Nasciamento (sp?) on `Maracatu Atomico`-back when Lee was playin his butt off...

 

See my post above for web URLs where I've seen "Aquas de Marco". It's one of my favorite songs. You've got to get "Elis & Tom" for the definitive rendition.

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I have several Brazilian tunes in my repertoire. I play 7 string with the low string tuned to an A. It's an absolutely perfect instrument for doing a I-V alternating bass which is such a big part of the samba feel. Here's a link to an excerpt from my solo version of One Note Samba and you can hear what I'm talking about.

 

http://www.jimsoloway.com/SoloSongMusic/OneNoteExcerpt.mp3

 

www.jimsoloway.com

 

[ 11-06-2001: Message edited by: Jim Soloway ]

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Originally posted by wager47:

hey jim

 

have you heard alfredo mura? he's a peruvian guitarist that lives/works in portland now.

 

where do you play in pdx?

 

I've heard a lot about Alfredo, but I haven't seen him yet. I've only been here about a year and the first half of that was mostly spent house hunting. I spent the summer playing primarily special events (parties, farmer's markets etc). Now I'm playing at a place called the Winebottle in Milwaukee every two weeks or so. I'm also doing a live broadcast on KMHD in January.

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Originally posted by Tedster:

Nice guitar work, Jim...was that the seven string? Tell me more...

 

I play everything on a 7 string with the extra string tuned to a low A. That creates an automatic I-V using the two lowest strings. The guitar on the recording is an inexpensive Schecter Jazz 7 with a Benedetto pickup. Since recording the CD, I picked up a Baker solid body 7 string that has now become my main instrument. It's a fabulous instrument with an absolute monster of a neck. Here are a couple of scans. There's also some more infor on my website.

www.jimsoloway.com

http://truckerfriendly.com/photos/baker/BodyLeft.JPG

http://truckerfriendly.com/photos/baker/HeadVertical.JPG

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the best of sergio mendez and brasil '65

cool girl guitarrist - can't remember her name rite now.

 

also: bola sete

ain't exactly yer mellow nylon string bossa stuff, more like the jimi hendrix experience of acoustic brasilian music (or something like that)

in brasilian billiards, the seven ball is the black one. bola sete means seven ball in portugese. bola sete is a black guy. cute nickname, huh?

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